Building Amendment Bill

I move, That the Building Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for all of their work and consideration of this bill. I’d also like to thank all our New Zealanders who took the time to make submissions, as well as to provide their insight and feedback on this legislation. Everyone in this House of Parliament knows why we need to be able to act swiftly and effectively to manage buildings in extreme circumstances. The topic of this bill, when you drill down to it, is about protecting lives and people’s livelihoods. We need systems in place that can cope with extreme situations that our country can face, such as natural disasters like earthquakes, and can also show vulnerabilities in our buildings. The Building Amendment Bill steps in to fill gaps that exist in New Zealand’s management of buildings in an emergency and, in the processes of investigating significant building failures.

This bill amends the Building Act 2004 in two ways. Firstly, it introduces new powers to create a clear and balanced system that can manage risks buildings can pose to people and property from responding to recovery following a significant emergency. Secondly, the bill provides the central building regulator, which is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), with a clear set of powers to investigate significant building failures. This lets us learn lessons from and to improve our regulatory system. These amendments to the Building Act are informed by our past experiences, in particular the lessons that we’ve learnt from both the Christchurch and the Kaikōura earthquakes. These events showed us the hard way exactly why being better prepared is so vitally important.

The Building Amendment Bill recognises the central importance of making sure that our buildings are well looked after, of making sure there is a process that comprehensively manages them during an emergency, from start to finish, and of making sure that the buildings are safe and that we learn from any building failures that may occur. The central importance of this bill was acknowledged by those who submitted during the select committee process. Submissions agreed that the core of what this bill is meant to achieve, whilst drawing attention to areas where it could be improved, is really why we should improve our Building Act 2004.

During the course of consideration by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, the bill underwent changes to address issues raised by both submitters and by the select committee themselves. I will summarise these. The first modification I will take you through—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I just interrupt the member to remind her that she should not be reading her speech. The second reading is not the time when speeches are read. We had the Hon Stuart Nash the other day put his notes aside and make an excellent speech at the second reading stage.

Excellent. So the three main categories that the Building Amendment Bill will address are these: first, when there are urgent works on buildings in order to save lives, the Building Amendment Bill should absolutely ensure that that is addressed; second, when there are works on buildings that have economic businesses, we should ensure that, as we are making sure that the buildings are made safer, we provide the least economic disruption while those works are being done; and third, we should ensure that, as we are strengthening the buildings, we’ve taken into consideration that we’re saving lives—that they are fit for purpose long term, meaning that, as we make sure that our buildings are strengthened for earthquakes, yes, we save lives and, as we strengthen those buildings, we ensure that the quality that is put into those buildings makes it so that they last a very long time. Many of these buildings are Government buildings; so it is in our interest as taxpayers—and many of them also are buildings that are owned by council; so there are also ratepayers that are affected by this. So, as we strengthen these buildings, it is in all of our interests, both as taxpayers and as ratepayers, that we ensure that they are strengthened and that they last a long, long time.

Another new section was added in response to the select committee as well as to the submissions that were made, which will clarify the powers and who should exercise those powers, because, when emergencies like these arise, we have councils who have powers; we have the emergency defence force, who also have powers; and we have the MBIE, which has some powers over buildings. So this Building Amendment Bill is to ensure that, when those buildings are being strengthened, we know exactly who is responsible for what. So a new section has been added to ensure that we do not remove the possibility of a follow-up investigation.

One of the things that we saw in Christchurch was that there was, to give you an example, a particular building that needed to be strengthened; however, there was a building that was in the front, and in order to access and strengthen the building at the back, we had to actually get the agreement of the owners of the building at the front. What this legislation does is put that aside, and it ensures that whoever it is, be they owned by a private owner, be they owned by council, or be they owned by Government, that all of those issues of ownership are put to the side and that we focus on ensuring that we strengthen our buildings and that we also ensure—one of these buildings could have fallen on people—that people’s lives are indeed saved.

In terms of the section on determinations, which are legally binding, we also wanted to make sure that for MBIE, on matters of doubt, should there be any dispute that arises, there is the clarity of the legislation, and that it’s reworded so that it provides positive descriptions of the conditions for when a determination can apply. The draft legislation actually described when determinations did not apply. So the changes were made so that it was positive and clearer.

The bill also proposes to fix unworkable time lines in terms of compliance for dam owners. Presently, dam owners have a responsibility to provide classification and certification of their dams to the regional authority. The time lines for compliance in this section, however, are not workable in many situations. So a new clause has been inserted to resolve this, clarifying the wording in the bill. Finally, the wording was fixed so that the terms are more consistent, such as replacing the term “an individual” with “an owner or an occupier”.

By way of conclusion, these recommendations build on all the work that has been done so far by the select committee, as well as by those who presented to the select committee. The recommendations stay true to the original intent of the bill. We’ve refined the language; we’ve addressed concerns and clarified the purpose. The select committee process has been invaluable, and I thank all of the members for their hard work. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Building Amendment Bill at the second reading. I think it’s just useful to remind ourselves that we, the National Party, will be supporting this bill because, of course, it is our bill. We introduced it, we did all the hard work, but I do take a moment just to congratulate the Minister for actually steering this bill through, which is the first that she’s steered through Parliament since she became the Minister for Building and Construction.

This is a very important bill because what it is seeking to do is deal with the issue of when there is a big seismic event or some issue where there is substantial building failure—and we’ve seen some of the examples of that; we’ve seen the issue with Statistics House following the Kaikōura earthquake, where we saw floors collapse. This was quite a significant issue where the footings were not wide enough—normally, they’re required to be 50 millimetres. With the movement of the building in an earthquake and also with some of the variations in how buildings are constructed, which are not actually perfectly square, that 50 millimetres, which is meant to be a tolerance level in the event of a seismic activity, often is reduced down to, maybe, 30 millimetres, and when you have a big seismic event like we had in Kaikōura, which rocked that building, that’s when we see the examples of those floors coming off. Interestingly, when that happened, some of the floors had been fixed up, but there were a couple that hadn’t, and those were the ones which failed.

Also, we’ve seen it in some other situations as well, and I think what this is doing is allowing for the learnings to come out of those occasions. So the key powers—and they’re set out in new section 207D of the Building Act, which states that, first of all, what we want to do is to learn from these failures. The second is about informing decisions about the performance of functions and duties of what’s undertaken under these powers, and the third thing is about helping, basically, with new designs and the way we should deal with it. That has been an issue, and the issue, actually, to be very specific, is that, in many cases, when we’ve had these events, officials—and when I say officials, I’m talking about not only building officials but emergency people, and this Act actually changes both the Building Act as well as the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. What it does is allow relevant authorised officials to be able to go in and inspect the building.

Now, often this is during a period of absolute mayhem, if I can use that word, immediately following a disaster where you have some of the significant earthquakes we’ve had in New Zealand, unfortunately. So these are the powers to allow people to go in, look at the issues, and do it. And, of course, there’s a contradiction and sometimes conflict with the rights of the building owner and also the tenants of those commercial buildings. So you’ve got officials wanting to close them down perhaps and you’ve got owners wanting to keep them open and people who own businesses are torn between making sure that their businesses survive but also keeping their staff safe. So this bill deals with this, and actually what the amendment bill does is it actually introduces three categories.

We have an “urgent works to remove or reduce risk”. So this is where we’ve had catastrophic failure, and Statistics House is a classic example. No one should have been allowed to go back in there and we needed to make some changes, that area needed to be made safe, and that is what’s covered under “urgent works to remove or reduce risk”—section 133BU in clause 12, Madam Deputy Speaker—I know you watch these bills very keenly. There’s a second category, which is “important but not urgent”, and again there’s a sort of a cascade as we work our way through. So these are works that are required, and it might be protecting pedestrian ways, related to a building, or they could be made safe, but the building itself may not be. And then there’s a third category, which is “works necessary in the long term for the long-term use and occupation of the building”. And where we ended up with those categories is, I think, a reasonable sort of bounds around what the rights of officials are to be able to go and do things, but also it is sort of monitoring and protecting the rights of tenants and owners.

I think one of the issues that we did discuss in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee during our select committees process—and, again, like the Minister, I want to acknowledge those who submitted—is the issue of getting rights to the information that’s gleaned or obtained during this process. There’s two issues related to that. The first one is: who should that information be shared with? The bill actually covers that. It gives quite a lot of power to the CE to be able to give out that information to parties that he or she thinks are relevant—when I say CE, I mean the chief executive being able to pass on that information to the extent that it’s necessary.

But there’s an issue around protecting rights, and, of course, any of these sorts of things—once you get out in the public domain—can have a serious impact on the value of buildings. Therefore that’s again, sort of, an area of conflict that we had to try and steer our way through, and I think where we’ve ended up—again, I hope we’ve got to the right spot on that in terms of making sure that information around a building is only shared with those people who have an absolute need for it and that should be shared with, and not shared in the open domain of public good, because that’s not always relevant to people.

The other aspect is the ability for people, particularly in relation to people where death may have occurred or even where injury in a building has occurred—what are the rights of the individual family, in most cases, to be able to access some of the information that is obtained or even the reports that are produced by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment component? And that, again, is a little tension point because at one stage we’re trying to learn from those failures, but on the other side you’re now crossing into the bounds of civil prosecutions, that type of stuff. There is an issue in this, and it was quite a thorny issue for the committee, which was around those people who had family members or whatever directly affected—should they be entitled to such information?

I think where we’ve got to is a situation that works; namely, that information can be obtained under the Official Information Act, and there is the right of families to seek judicial review on information, but the grounds, as most of the lawyers in Parliament will know, around a judicial review are reasonably limited. I’m just trying to find it here. The grounds are that it was unlawfully or unreasonably or procedurally defective in the way that the information was gleaned. That is a high test for a family who may have been in a situation where they’ve seen family members injured or they have died. I think that’s a bit of a tension point for this bill. We tested the bounds of whether they should be entitled to more information on a confidential basis, but that’s something the committee worked through. I think we’ve ended up in a reasonable space in it, but it’s one that we will continue to test and consider as we work our way through the next stage, the committee of the whole House.

But I think this is a good bill in terms of trying to deal with those problem buildings that have been damaged and, as the Minister said, also other infrastructure assets such as dams etc. I think we’re making progress. It’s good to see this bill coming through the House and progressing over time.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s great to be able to take a call in this second reading debate on the Building Amendment Bill, one of a long line of amendments to the 2004 Building Act, which, if I’m not wrong, for the most part attract cross-party support. It’s an ongoing evolution of the Building Act with a great number of bills over the last decade or so that have been designed to fine-tune our building regulatory system to make it more responsive to the consumer and to encourage a construction industry and development industry that is more responsive to demand.

This particular bill seeks to distil some of the lessons from the Kaikōura and Wellington earthquakes and the Canterbury earthquakes in relation to buildings after an emergency and investigations after an emergency in order to learn the lessons. So those are the two main kinds of provisions in the bill: management of buildings after an emergency, and investigating building failures.

Some important work has been done by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, I think, in trying to provide some clarity, really, about the powers that are exercised by a responsible person, which, as Andrew Bayly remarked, we’d often think of being a local government official, or sometimes a police officer, who would go into a building after an emergency. The select committee recommended with, I think, the helpful submissions from a number of people that it would be good to insert a new section—new section 133BNA—to give a responsible person or to give a police constable the clear power to enter a building or land for specified purposes, and it sets out a number of subsections there.

The responsible person may enter a building or land for a number of purposes for the purpose if exercising a power under various provisions—for example, to keep people at a safe distance or to protect the building, or for the purposes of urgent work to remove or reduce risks or works for the long-term use or occupation of the building. Clarifications and examples were also inserted by the select committee to better illustrate three different categories of when different powers to direct works to be carried out would apply: urgent works to remove or reduce risks, works to remove or reduce risks to economic disruption, and works for longer-term use or occupation of the building.

I thought there was also, in the reading, interesting material about the select committee’s deliberations on what, for example, could have been different in recent emergencies if these powers were in place, and we do have the recent example of the Kaikōura earthquake in 2016. These powers in the bill could have been used to manage buildings, both in Kaikōura, where there was a state of emergency declared, but also in Wellington, where there wasn’t, and where a local—what they call—transition period was put in place. In Wellington, the transition period may not have been needed, as it was only required to manage buildings, but the powers in this bill—the new powers that are proposed—would have provided a much better way to manage the situation.

Transition periods under the law provide extraordinary powers that can interfere with personal and property rights, and, again, Andrew Bayly made the point that in a situation like this, when you’ve got a building and there’s been an emergency, it may not be safe to go into the building. Officials want to go in and ascertain the extent of the damage and make a judgment about whether or not the building should be red-stickered, for example, or whether other restrictions should be put in place. That could have a major impact on people running businesses from that building or, indeed, living in those buildings. The select committee, I think, gave quite a lot of thought to how in this bill property rights in that kind of example could be protected. So it provides a framework for recognising those rights and it contains checks and balances—as you’d expect—to ensure that the proposed powers are used appropriately.

It puts in place a set of overarching considerations that need to be satisfied before these powers can be exercised. Of course, protecting human life and safety has to be paramount, but, nevertheless, if you believe that these powers need to be there—which I think everybody in the House does and everybody in the select committee did—then it’s appropriate that there are some criteria and some restrictions around the exercise of those powers.

There were some other interesting reflections that came out of the select committee. I understand that submitters from the defence agencies raised concerns that the powers in this bill might allow unauthorised persons access to restricted buildings, and that was a real concern for the defence agencies who came along to the committee. A related concern was that the requirement for building owners to provide information about the building could potentially reveal any security vulnerabilities in that building.

So as a result of that the committee have proposed the addition of a provision where a person exercising these powers in relation to a special category of building—for example, one that is home to a security agency—must exercise the powers in accordance with instructions given by the officer in charge of that building. So basically, it’s a carve-out of a kind for the security agencies. Diplomatic buildings also were raised at the select committee, and whether or not access to embassies and consulates would have some unintended consequence. So a provision is proposed so that there will be operational guidance that will be developed with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

There are also, of course, other kinds of buildings that hold sensitive information, such as the courts, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Corrections, and the New Zealand Police. Again, operational guidance for the exercise of these powers will be developed with the assistance of those agencies.

So it’s great to see cross-party support across the House for this bill. Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of the Minister for Building and Construction, Jenny Salesa, not only for this bill but for the great leadership she’s provided recently with the announcement of the accord that the Government has announced with the construction industry to tackle many difficult and deep-seated productivity issues in the construction industry, and for her whole legislative reform package that’s tackling some of the most challenging but most important issues in relation to risk and liability, workforce development, and product certification—really important work. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Building Amendment Bill is supported by both sides of the House. I certainly support it, fundamentally because it’s a National Party Bill. The work was done in the previous Government—

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: You’re so tribal, Alastair.

Oh yeah, damn right—damn right. It is good to see the other side of the House supporting what is, fundamentally, a National Party bill. I tell you what, it’s not the first bill that they’ve supported that’s been all National Party work, and it won’t be the last. There will be another bill, I’m sure. I’m going to bet the next bill that they will support, which has come from this side of the House, will be the drug driving bill—I bet you, it’s going to come and they will support it.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: It won’t look anything like your bill.

It will be stolen, it will be picked up, and it will be adopted by the Government and they will claim it as their own.

But we come to this bill—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please, please.

The previous speaker, Phil Twyford, and Minister Salesa have—in fact, picking up on Minister Salesa’s example, it was a very good example of why we need this bill: she gave the example of an affected building, a dangerous building being, basically, landlocked, if you like, behind other buildings, and to get access to that building we need the cooperation and powers to enter both buildings to solve the issue. That’s what this bill does, it gives certain people certain powers which override the interests of the building owner. It overrides the ability of someone to say: “Keep out of my place, this is my castle, you’re trespassing”—and that’s the right thing. The right thing is to override that fundamental right, because the building in question is a risk—a high risk, a medium risk, a lower risk, there are three cascading types of risk mentioned in the bill. So that is important that those fundamental rights are overridden for the benefit of the community as a whole. That’s the first part of the bill. In the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, we clarified some of those powers and some of the people that were able to do that work.

The second part of the bill relates to what happens after the event and what we can learn after the event. Again, it gives certain people certain powers to compel agencies or landowners or engineers or architects to hand across certain information to enable the investigators to understand what went wrong in the buildings that we’re talking about—the buildings that are falling over. There have been a number of buildings in Christchurch and in Wellington, over the years, without this legislation, but, thankfully, with the cooperation of those landlords or the building owners, to allow investigators to come in, but it has not been an absolute. This bill makes it absolutely clear that those owners have to give up to furnish information to investigators so that they may learn the cause of, for example, Statistics House down here in Wellington, on the port.

So it’s a very good bill. Two parts, as I say, and it will be as Minister Twyford says, I’m sure, an evolving bill, with lots of amendments through the corridors of time. No doubt there will be further amendments as we work out whether the balance that I talked about earlier is right or about right—some people will say it’s not quite right, and we may end up discussing that further in committee stage. But at this point, in my view, it is in very good shape, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to confirm our support of the Building Amendment Bill during the second reading. When we look at, as has been traversed before, this amendment to the Building Act of 2004, it has two separate parts: the new powers to manage buildings in an emergency, and putting an end-to-end response to a recovery and clarifying some of those powers. Of course, that allows the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment, as the central regulatory authority, a clear set of powers and guidelines for it to manage and investigate damaged buildings. We have learnt these lessons—obviously, through the select committee process we’ve gone through the actual detail—in real time, unfortunately. We’ve had significant events—of course, Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes—but there have also been other things that probably haven’t been quite as high profile: the collapse of the roof of Stadium Southland under snow. So it’s not necessarily a major seismic event that would trigger the clauses in this bill.

So I commend the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for going through this bill. Actually, I wasn’t on that committee but when you go through it, it’s actually quite a complex bill—there are a lot of implications. We’ve just been talking about privacy and the likes that come into play, and there’s been a wide-ranging discussion in how we can tidy these provisions up and tidy this bill up—of course, under the wise stewardship of Darroch Ball, my colleague who chairs that committee with his Mensa-level IQ, so I’m sure that he has done a good job in helping assist this process.

Just looking at the first part of this bill, in terms of managing buildings during and after an emergency, it gives the Minister some powers to take direct action, and it clarifies the use and timing of those powers. It also gives special requirements around heritage buildings. I think there’s 4,400 Category 2 buildings and just over 1,000 Category 1 heritage buildings. This is a major issue in New Zealand, it’s something that New Zealand First actually has a lot of concern around: the earthquake standards—many of these buildings do not meet code, and particularly in our rural and provincial areas, the economic revenue that can be gained from them, especially the commercial buildings, doesn’t actually make it economic to bring the buildings up to code. There’s a lot of buildings—and I see the member for Whanganui here, who would know this very well, there’s a lot of historic buildings, I’ve been up there and seen them myself in looking at this very issue in part of bringing a members’ bill forward. We have many, many of these buildings around, of course, in Southland and Invercargill as well, particularly.

So we are very vulnerable, particularly in a seismic event, because we’ve got a lot of buildings that are just not economic to do up under the current provisions and we are running the clock down in terms of the time lines. There’s going to be the potential for buildings to be just walked away from at the end of a 15- or 25-year period, and we need to do a little bit more, I think, thinking around how we can avoid that, and New Zealand First certainly has been. This is, essentially, the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff after something like that does happen. So we have clarified a number of these powers and the requirements around consultation.

In terms of the investigating building failures, either that have or could have resulted in serious injury or death and assisting in determining a cause, there’s a number of parts to this: securing a site, clarity around the rules about entering the property and carrying out inspections, requiring provision of information to MBIE, and also the sharing of the information—and we have traversed that a bit tonight. We’re going into property rights and privacy provisions. It has been quite a delicate act. I’m sure the select committee has been well exercised in trying to land this in just the right place.

And, of course, it goes back. I think we started this process back in 2015 with a public discussion document, and it’s worked its way through the system. There were very substantive submissions to the select committee process, from the likes of Local Government New Zealand and Christchurch City Council—and haven’t they learnt their lessons the hard way. And, of course, the royal commission and their findings has been leaned on very heavily through this select committee process. As we heard, even the Ministry of Defence has had some input. So it just shows you how wide ranging this is.

Actually, one of the issues that came up through this is dams—you know, what do you do with dams and evacuations, where you’ve got a dam that may be damaged and someone’s got to make a call at that very moment as to whether that is a safe situation. And it gives those powers. Also, within that, it does clarify the immunity from civil proceedings for constables if it can be demonstrated, of course, that they’ve acted in good faith.

So there are a number of provisions of this bill. I commend the select committee under chairman Ball for the work they’ve done in going through this—this is an important piece of legislation—and Minister Salesa for shepherding it through. There’s a lot of work being done in that wider area, and I’m pleased that she has put some priority on this, and, as such, New Zealand First look forward to supporting this through the committee process. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to take a call.

💬 Nicola Willis: This will be good.

No pressure! I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and did a lot of hard work on that select committee. There’s a lot of good people on there. This is the end result of that.

I’d like to acknowledge it’s quarter to 6 on Thursday—knock-off time. You’ve managed to maintain your concentration right till the last minute. I recognise that because you’re a large-electorate MP, so you’re a hard worker and you’ve done long hours. So I acknowledge that.

I’d like to acknowledge Minister Phil Twyford, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, for getting up and speaking a couple of calls ago. I note that he’s not the Minister for Building and Construction, because he’s not building any houses; he’s just buying them. But all credit to him. I just had to get that in.

This is a small, significant bill. Of course we’re supporting it, because it is a National Party bill, work of the previous National Government. So of course we’re supporting it.

Sometimes good legislation like this comes out of terrible experiences like we suffered in Christchurch and Kaikōura, where the lessons learnt from these disasters mean that we have to change the law because we learn the lessons and we learn how to do things better. This bill creates a robust process to manage buildings in the event of an emergency before, during, and after, and it comes out of the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes. Those earthquakes and the aftermath of that highlighted the deficiencies that we have in our law, and so on the select committee we got to listen to both the Christchurch City Council, Rangitīkei District Council, Wellington City Council, and also Local Government New Zealand, along with a number of other submitters that provided us with some good feedback so that we could create a good law.

So that allowed our emergency services and our authorities, and gives them the teeth, to actually act and do the proper job. So when things are constantly changing and there are competing priorities at play, occupants want to have access to the property and retrieve their belongings, and this gives some rules around that. Engineers who have to make critical and crucial decisions with very little information—it allows them to do their job. And property owners have to deal with significant damage in a valuable asset, so they also need to know where they stand. This sets out some good ground rules so that everyone knows where they stand and where they are.

So it’s a good piece of legislation. There may well be some more amendments, but I see it as a good piece of legislation. It’s well worthwhile, and it’s a no-brainer that it’s supported across the House. We’re all going to benefit out of it, so I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Greens will absolutely support this Building Amendment Bill, which is a new system for managing buildings after an emergency. It immediately took me back to when I was working at the Human Rights Commission in the Auckland office. Our Christchurch office building got locked up—well, for years—and people had left their desks and had left the building as is and could not go back inside. I recall the difficulty of trying to manage that process. This is, from what I can see, exactly what this bill is trying to do better on. I mean, everything changes with those earthquakes, with natural events, with incidents, and the purpose of this bill primarily goes to risks to public safety and risks to public property. So I’m thankful for the opportunity to speak to this and relate it back to what I myself can recall around the time as a colleague of Christchurch staff who had to try and manage that whole process. There, I guess, the bill also tries to pick up on the balance and the tensions between building owners, occupiers, and tenants, and public safety and safety to property.

So this bill provides for that new system to be able to be flexible enough and respond to everything being turned upside down, and allows for those investigations of building failures to take place. That was actually the problem was that it was trying to streamline. And the reason why our staff couldn’t get back into their offices was because we were waiting for the investigations to take place, to actually figure out what was going on; whether anybody at all could even go in and retrieve everything—computers, documents, their stationery, even their personal belongings—waiting for those processes to happen, and a lack of clarity around who could even do it.

Actually, and on that note, I was quite interested to know who the responsible person is who gets to exercise the powers that this bill is wanting to provide. So the new processes for buildings affected by emergency works to address those safety concerns, and new powers to bridge the immediate response work with the completed recovery work and how that even comes together. It involves allowing for responsible persons exercising powers to investigate, to see what works need to be completed, to assess the safety of the buildings and the risk to public safety. So it is in section 133BJ of this bill—which talks about the management of buildings in designated areas—it sets out who may exercise those powers under this new management process. I just wanted to put on to the House—for interest, also—that those sorts of responsible powers, of course, will come to people like the relevant Ministers or “On direction by the Minister, by the territorial authority that is responsible for the designated area”. So those are the local or regional authorities, but it also could include the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act officers and those can be controllers and recovery managers. Responsible persons who could exercise those powers could also, I guess, end up with controllers and constables and directors of civil defence emergency management groups. So it’s most definitely not just a loose definition of saying, “Someone is responsible”. There are clear—and we didn’t quite canvass that tonight in the House—definitions of who those responsible persons are.

I also picked up that the provisions under this Building Amendment Bill would also protect heritage buildings and there has been—after Kaikōura, Christchurch—discussion, of course, about whether marae, if they are registered, come under heritage protection. So this bill would apply to marae as well. Now, that’s going to be interesting if we are ever faced with a situation of, again—because, and other speakers have mentioned, while the bill gives some clarity as to balancing those powers of property owners and tenants with public safety, actually, at the heart of that will be how they manage the relationships to have that conversation—this is what’s going to happen, making sure everyone’s on board so that we can streamline those new processes and those investigations to happen in a way that will have a better outcome for everyone concerned, in a way that won’t cause further confusion and disruption.

I don’t know where it is, but there’s a principle of limiting the disruption to the owner or tenants’ operations as much as possible. So the bill tries to be balanced and reasonable, tries to get the job done, and tries to keep public safety and the protection of property at the core, while keeping a check on any response being proportional to the incident—to the earthquake, to the natural disaster—and to what has actually happened to the building. So it’s really well-thought-out—and I’ve only just skimmed a small part of it, but really well-thought-out.

I must congratulate the select committee for working through these incredible details, the submissions that allowed for some amendments and further clarity to be made to the bill that has come back in second reading, and for taking on board the concerns of submitters and the logic and the insight of submitters to be able to make it a better bill, I think, that has come into the House today. So I’m really pleased to be able to support this and to continue the debates. Whether there are any further changes, particularly around balancing the sort of private property and public safety aspects, is what I’ll be listening to hear, and contributions later on in the committee stage from the Minister as well. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Building Amendment Bill, noting that it’s really looking at tidying up some of the legislation, creating a set of rules in which we might be able to work more thoroughly, more efficiently, and more safely after an emergency. Of course, in my electorate of the Waikato, we’re #blessed to not be particularly subject to seismic shocks, but there are other regions, of course, that have been—Canterbury and Kaikōura most notably. So with that, it’s important to make sure that we have the right rules in place.

I didn’t sit on this committee for the duration—I was there for the submissions at the start of the first day and then for the final day at the end, so I sort of caught both ends of it, as it were—but I was also impressed by the submitters through that process. The territorial authorities—Christchurch City Council, for example—and also other submitters, such as Spark from an infrastructure perspective, were very collaborative and very happy to go away, work together, and provide some input to the committee, which was gratefully received as well. So I’d like to acknowledge them for their contribution.

There was one aspect that I just wanted to bring to the attention of the House today. It’s not a concern as such but perhaps an area that might be tidied up with a Supplementary Order Paper, maybe, in the committee the whole House stage. Under new section 133BV “Works to remove or reduce other risks”, inserted by clause 12, it talks about if there is a disruption and a responsible person has to go in and make some changes or create a set of rules or rope off an area, as it were—and I think that’s under new section 133BR, around a safe distance—there’s several requirements of them before they can do that, such as, 10 days before they do that, notifying the owners of the building or the occupiers of the damaged building that they’re looking to rope off, as it were, and also owners and occupiers of other buildings, and owners and occupiers of critical infrastructure whose use is disrupted by that safety zone being put in place.

One aspect there: I just wonder whether that should also include “land or property” rather than being specifically restricted to neighbouring buildings. I use the example of perhaps an urban car-park, where it doesn’t have significant buildings or critical infrastructure on it but the use of that property right would be impacted by having a safety barrier placed on it in relation to a neighbouring building. I just wonder whether that’s perhaps something that might be able to be considered, because I note that in previous sections—133BT—it does talk about buildings and land as separate distinctions, but then it doesn’t include that in 133BV. So I think perhaps that’s one area that the Minister might like to consider and determine whether or not it is appropriate. Again, I reiterate I didn’t sit through the entire process, so perhaps I’m missing part of that, but that’s one area that I would like to see tidied up.

Aside from that, though, I think this is a very good piece of legislation. It looks to put some good rules in place to ensure we can manage emergencies more safely and for everyone’s benefit as best as possible. So I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Building Amendment Bill—the second reading.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Why do they always give you the last slot, mate?

And here he is. It’s always the most intelligent and the best looking who get the final say, but anyway. I commend this bill to the House. There we are.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.